Aldric Emberwise's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

The voice waited. "Speak your need," the statue said again. Aldric opened his mouth and found nothing solid. He needed water. He needed light. He needed food and beds and a hundred things for a haven. He said all of them at once. The cracked figure dimmed. The warmth in the building behind him thinned. He had made the same mistake with the wall. Too many wants meant no answer. Wren watched him fail. "It wants one thing," she said. "Not a list." Grave dust still marked her feet. She had walked out of the death realm alone, and now she knelt at the one thing that had answered her. "When I asked it for a way home, it went quiet too. I didn't know how to show it what home was." Her word stuck in Aldric's mind. Show. Not tell. The statue did not want a speech. It wanted proof of a need it could grant. Boots crunched behind them. Mira came out from the building, arms tight against the cold, her clay tablet pressed to her chest. She had guarded that star map since Aldric first met her, certain it pointed to a sky no one here could find. "You broke the heat again," she said. Then she saw the glowing figure and stopped. "What is that?" "It grants needs," Aldric said. "But I can't make it understand." He looked at her tablet, then at the token at Wren's throat. An idea turned in him. The statue did not read hearts. It read things carried in. Proof. Aldric drew the broken compass from his coat. He had found it on the road the day he arrived, its glass cracked, its needle bent, useless for pointing anywhere. He held it up to the blank stone eyes. "This is the need," he said. "Every traveler here is lost. They came through rifts. They can't find the way back. This is what we need most. A way to guide them home." The statue's eyes flared bright yellow. The bent needle inside the cracked glass twitched. Then it swung. It steadied and held one direction, firm, as if pulled by something real. "It moved," Mira breathed. She dropped beside Aldric and turned her tablet toward the compass. The needle shifted, then pointed a new way. "It's reading the map. It knows where my sky is." Her voice shook. "It's showing the road home." "One asked truly," the statue ground out. "One is counted. The path is opened. But a path both ways lets both ways through." Its eyes dimmed to a steady glow. The needle stayed fixed. Aldric stood, the warm compass in his hand. He had his tool at last. The haven could guide the lost. But the statue's last words settled cold in him. A door that opened out could open in. Something on the other side could follow the path back.